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Banned
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Originally Posted by flstf
I think many people will not differentiate this guy's actions as Republican or Democrat but will just cause more negative opinions of our polititians in general. I see lots of discussions on the news about how low the President's poll numbers are with hardly a mention that approval of congress is much lower. Cases like this will probably drive those numbers even lower.
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That's not gonna work, flstf. I might agree with your points if this scandal took place in a multi party political environment.
This is a two party system, and there is an election....all members of the house of rep. will be on the ballot....five weeks from tomorrow. Which candidates will be impacted negatively by this "news", republicans or democrats? These are the headlines:
Quote:
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t...cid=1109897215
<h3>Some House Republicans were told last year about Foley's e-mails</h3>
San Jose Mercury News, USA - Sep 30, 2006
... The three top leaders - Hastert, Majority Leader John Boehner and Majority Whip Roy Blunt put out a sharply worded statement late Saturday, calling the contact ...
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<b>....and this is the "background":
<b>Please consider that Rep. Alexander received a complaint, "a year ago", from parents of a 16 year old male house page who was receiving emails from Foley, including a request by Foley, for a "photo" of the teen.
Rep. Alexander took the complaint to the Chairman, Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds,
http://www.nrcc.org/about/chairmanbio.aspx
of the republican NRCC, a political re-election committee, not an ethics
investigation committee, or a law enforcement agency.</b>
<h3>Consider who Thomas M. Reynolds current Chief of Staff is:</h3>
Quote:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010118.php
(October 02, 2006 -- 02:03 PM EDT // link)
Just watching Hastert's press conference here. <b>It's great how he's trying to shift this all of this off the House leadership and to unnamed people outside the House. The Hastert line seems to be: Hey, We Ignored it. So We're Off the Hook.</b>
Late Update: Seems they may be trying to shift this over to Rep. Alexander and former Clerk Trandahl.
Later Update: Needless to say, Hastert and Shimkus refused to take questions. And keep an eye on their new line, trying to dodge blame by saying that Foley waited for the pages to leave the program before he pounced.
-- Josh Marshall
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Quote:
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/...t_wants_f.html
Originally posted: October 2, 2006
Hastert: Media had same Foley e-mails we had
Posted by Frank James at 7:04 am CDT
........The office of Rep. Dennis Hastert, House Speaker, issued copies of letters calling for federal and state probes of former Rep. Mark Foley, who abruptly resigned from Congress Friday after disclosures that he had Internet communications, some quite sordid, with teenage congressional pages and former pages.
Hastert wrote both Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. The letters are essentially the same aside from some minor tweaking....
.......
The letters are interesting because they seem to reveal an emerging damage-control strategy that Hastert may use to defend House Republicans in their handling of the Foley matter. It boils down to saying House Republicans did more than the media did when faced with the same Foley emails.
The following paragraph contains the damage-control strategy.
<b>According to an Editor's Note that appeared on the St. Petersburg Times' website yesterday, the Times was given a set of emails from Mr. Foley to Representative Alexander's former page in November of 2005. (See "A Note From the Editors" located at http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/, visited on September 30, 2006). The editors state that they viewed this exchange as "friendly chit chat" and decided not to publish it after hearing an explanation from Representative Foley. Acting on this same communication, the Chairman of the House Page Board and the then Clerk of the House confronted Mr. Foley, demanded he cease all contact with the former page as his parents had requested, and believed they had privately resolved the situation as the parents had requested.</b>
So the usually snapping watchdogs of the Times essentially did nothing with the emails after apparently buying Foley's explanation <b>while Rep. John Shimkus (R-Il.) who heads the House Page Board and the former House clerk "confronted" Foley demanding he cease all contact with the teenager.
Usually, lawmakers complain about the press being overzealous. This is one case where Hastert seems to welcome and get some benefit that we in the media weren't zealous enough.</b>
It was Shimkus and the former clerk who acted with force if not zeal on information the Times took a pass on, or so the letter seems to say.
When you think about it, that paragraph isn't really necessary in a letter asking for criminal investigations of Foley. The allegedly criminal activity actually centers on the salacious instant messages that are mentioned later in the letter.
The paragraph is really meant for the public and the media. <b>For the media, it's a brush back pitch to get our attention.
A media organization had the same information that House Republicans had. The media organization did nothing with it while those in the House responsible for the pages gave Foley a stern talking to. So back off</b>, seems to be the letter's message to the media.
The other interesting thing about the letter is <h3>Hastert's call for an investigation into who had copies of the sexually charged IMs which forced Foley's resignation. ABC News reported the existence of those IMs and got them from somewhere.
Hastert appears to be suggesting that whoever had those IMs and didn't go to law enforcement first may have committed a crime.</h3> Who knows, maybe it was some Democrat dirty trick meant to embarass House Republicans before the mid-term elections?
In any event, Hastert clearly wants to erase any notion that House Republicans were trying coverup anything with the line: "I request that the scope of your investigation include any and all individuals who may have been aware of this matter-be they Members of Congress, employees of the House of Representatives, <b>or anyone outside the Congress."</b>
While Hastert is trying to banish any thought someone might have that House Republicans were guilty of a coverup, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is doing what she can to keep that notion alive. In a statement she released today, she actually accuses House Republicans of a coverup:
<b>Sunday, October 1, 2006
Pelosi Statement on Preliminary FBI Investigation of Mark Foley
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on news reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is opening a preliminary investigation of the sexually explicit e-mails Congressman Mark Foley sent an underage former House Page.
“The FBI is rightly investigating former Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s reported internet stalking of an underage former House Page. Mr. Foley is outside the reach of the House Ethics Committee, however the required investigation into the cover up of Mr. Foley’s behavior by the Republican Leadership must quickly move forward.
“The children who work as Pages in the Congress are Members’ special trust. Statements by the Republican Leadership indicate that they violated this trust when they were made aware of the internet stalking of an underage Page by Mr. Foley and covered it up for six months to a year.
“Congress must not pass the buck on investigating this cover up. The children, their parents, the public, and our colleagues must be assured that such abhorrent behavior is not tolerated and will never happen again.”</b>
# # #
Notice, Pelosi doesn't say alleged coverup. She states it as though it is a fact, plain and simple. The truth, of course, is messier. Republicans insist there was no coverup.
<b>True, they didn't tell the Democrat on the page board about the Foley emails</b>, an omission which may be partly fueling Pelosi's allegation and which may be proof enough for some that there was a coverup.
One thing that would be good to find out and that would suggest that Republicans weren't trying to minimize Foley's actions when they first learned about them <b>would be if they put the warning to Foley in writing.</b>
If they didn't, why not? At the very least, <b>did Shimkus document the conversation with a memo to his file or a memo to the House clerk? If not, why not?</b> Isn't that standard practice nowadays in <b>cases of sexual harassment or other unwelcome contact in order to later prove that the person who received the report really took it seriously?</b>
<b>If that warning wasn't documented,</b> that would seem rather odd in this day and age.
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The problem for Hastert, and certainly for Shimkus, is it doesn't end with the scenario described above:
This NY Times article, concerning former house page, Loraditch, contradicts ABC's quote of the former page's description about a 2001 "warning" about Mark Foley, from a house page supervisor:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/wa...n/02pages.html
October 2, 2006
Former Pages Describe Foley as Caring Ally
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — In the hierarchy of Congress, the high school students who serve as Congressional pages fall somewhere near the bottom, seemingly invisible as they scurry through the hallways of the Capitol ferrying messages to powerful lawmakers who often fail to give them a second glance.
In that rarefied world, Representative Mark Foley, the silver-haired Republican from Florida, stood out.
He took pains to befriend the 16- and 17-year-old aides, several former pages said in interviews on Sunday. He chatted with them on the House floor, they said, sent handwritten notes and urged them to keep in touch when they left Washington for their hometowns.
In 2002, he even stood up on the floor of the House, his eyes welling with tears, and commended the young men and women for their year of service. In his speech, Mr. Foley mentioned several of the high school students by name, describing a handwritten note to celebrate one young man’s graduation and a lunch with another at Morton’s steak house.
Ashley Gallo, a 21-year-old former page who is now a senior at Western Michigan University, said on Sunday that many of her friends had viewed Mr. Foley as one of the few lawmakers who made a real effort to reach out to young people.
“You didn’t have a lot of interaction with the members because most of them treated you like a kid, but he was pretty friendly,” said Ms. Gallo, who served as a page in 2001. “He would talk to people,” she said.
“He would say, ‘Here’s my e-mail address if you want to keep in touch.’ I don’t think anyone thought anything of it. They saw him as a mentor or a reference.”
Mr. Foley’s resignation on Friday, following the disclosure of his sexually explicit Internet and cellphone messages to pages, left many former pages shaken. And on Sunday, they burned up the phone lines and sent e-mail messages flying as they reached out to their old friends who remain tight-knit years after leaving Capitol Hill.
Patrick McDonald, 21, a senior at Ohio State University, said he took Mr. Foley up on his invitation to keep in touch and sent him an e-mail message asking about internship opportunities two years after he completed his work as a page in 2002. He said that he kept up a casual e-mail conversation — chatting about the 2004 presidential election, among other things — with Mr. Foley for several months and that it never became inappropriate.
“If a congressman was talking to you, it was the best thing in the world,” Mr. McDonald said. “And he made himself known to the pages in the first couple of weeks, befriending us, asking us how we were doing. He was one of the cool congressmen. He was willing to chill out with us.”
But despite Mr. Foley’s warm demeanor, Mr. McDonald and another former page said they later became aware that the lawmaker might have a darker side. Mr. McDonald said he learned that Mr. Foley had sexually explicit Internet conversations with several pages who had left the program. “I was disgusted, but I was not surprised when these revelations started circulating,” he said.
Congressional pages come to Washington from across the country, sponsored by their local senator or representative, in a highly competitive program that attracts thousands of applicants each year.
Many describe it as one of the most formative experiences of their lives, giving them a rare, insider’s view of the inner workings of power. Former pages have set up alumni associations and message boards, and exchange e-mail messages and attend reunions to keep the memories of their days in Congress alive.
They describe living in an intensely supervised and sheltered world during their time in Washington. The 72 pages who serve in the House of Representatives are paid a stipend. They share rooms in a two-story, red brick dormitory just blocks from the Capitol and have a 10 p.m. curfew on weeknights and a midnight curfew on weekends.
Pages start classes at 6:45 a.m, and work in the House of Representatives later, answering telephones, delivering documents and running errands for lawmakers. Every night, the former pages said, the dormitory supervisors checked to make sure every page was there on time.
James Kotecki, 20, who was a page in the spring semester of 2003, said his orientation included a video on sexual harassment. He said he did not remember any formal rules against fraternization, however, and added that the young pages enjoyed the rare opportunities to socialize with the lawmakers. He said he met Mr. Foley only in passing, but remembered him as “a nice guy.”
“Pages are kind of very, very low on the totem pole on the Hill,” said Mr. Kotecki, now a senior at Georgetown University. “Anytime a member is nice it’s fantastic because often members don’t give pages the time of day.”
Raymond Schillinger, 20, also a Georgetown student, echoed those thoughts. He worked for Mr. Foley this spring as an intern and said the congressman treated the young staff very well.
“He was very affable, always friendly with the staff, but never over friendly, nothing suggestive,” Mr. Schillinger said.
Matthew Loraditch, who worked as a page with Ms. Gallo and Mr. McDonald in 2001 and 2002, <B>said a supervisor had once casually mentioned that Mr. Foley “was odd”</b> and that he later saw sexually explicit text messages that Mr. Foley had sent to two former pages after they left the program.
<b>But Mr. Loraditch said he was never warned by program supervisors to stay away from him.</b> “He was friendly,” said Mr. Loraditch, who maintains a Web site for alumni and attends Towson University in Maryland. “He would talk to us more than some other members would.”
To this day, Mr. Loraditch still remembers the speech Mr. Foley gave to the pages in 2002. The genial lawmaker stood on the floor of the House and noted that several pages were weeping as he spoke.
“You all have proven without a doubt that you are not only courageous Americans but wonderful young people,” Mr. Foley said on June 6, 2002. “I salute you and I thank you, and I hope you will join me, too, in saluting everyone in the page program that has made this year a resounding, phenomenal learning experience and success for you. God bless you all.”
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Quote:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/...aff_warne.html
<b>GOP Staff Warned Pages About Foley in 2001</b>
October 01, 2006 4:00 PM
Maddy Sauer and Anna Schecter Report:
Republican staff member warned congressional pages five years ago to watch out for Congressman Mark Foley, according to a former page.
<b>Matthew Loraditch, a page in the 2001-2002 class, told ABC News he and other pages were warned about Foley by a supervisor in the House Clerk's office.
Loraditch, the president of the Page Alumni Association, said the pages were told "don't get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff."</b>
Staff members at the House Clerk's office did not return calls seeking comment.
Some of the sexually explicit instant messages that led to Foley's abrupt resignation Friday were sent to pages in Loraditch's class......
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<B>If Shimkus knew about Foley's "special interest" in 2001, and allowed him continued close association with house pages, I believe that Shimkus will be the first, after Foley, to resign from congress, in disgrace:</B>
Quote:
http://www.washingtonwatchdog.org/en...06jn02-89.html
[Congressional Record: June 6, 2002 (House)]
[Page H3278-H3283]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr06jn02-89]
FAREWELL TO DEPARTING 2001-2002 PAGE CLASS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) is recognized for 5 minutes.
[[Page H3279]]
<b>Mr. SHIMKUS.</b> Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to ask the Page
Class of 2001 and 2002 to come down and take the seats in this first
and second row, and try to congregate in the middle, if they can, and,
Mr. Speaker, at the conclusion of this I will include for the Record
the names of the entire graduating class that will be graduating
tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the end of a long year of working together, and it is an
honor to stand up, as chairman of the Page Board, along with a lot of
my colleagues, to do that hard part of saying good-bye. For me, this is
my first time chairing the Page Board, and so you are a very special
class, one that I will remember forever, and hopefully you all will
remember this experience.
<b>As chairman of the House Page Board</b>, it is my privilege to
acknowledge and thank you, an outstanding group of young people, but it
is difficult to let this group of pages go. This year's class has faced
challenges and struggles unlike any other class in history.....
............<b>Mr. SHIMKUS. I thank my colleague. Now someone who spends a lot of
time with you also, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley), would like
to say a thank you.
Mr. FOLEY.</b> I warn all of you not to cry in front of me, please, so I
can get through this very important day with you without shedding tears
as well.
First, I want all of you to salute two people that I know at times
were tough on you. They are taskmasters, they are disciplinarians; but
they love you in an incredibly personal way. I would like all of the
pages to clap for Ms. Sampson and Ms. Ivester, your supervisors.
Ms. Sampson is on the back rail. She does not like to come too close
here because she may cry, too; and she does not want any of the kids
before you depart on Saturday to see her being a vulnerable person. It
is true.
I hear so much laughter here and I am glad that there is laughter,
because this is a wonderful time of your life. Every time we celebrate
the departure of a page class, we remember your first day here and, of
course, we are here at your last. <b>You came in very shy and meek and
very polite and for the most part you have remained polite, but no
longer shy and meek.</b> You have taken on your respective roles as junior
Members of Congress and oftentimes I get a kick when I walk by the back
row, Mr. Foley, please mention the pages so our parents will hear us on
C-SPAN. The nice thing about today is you are on C-SPAN. And this is
recorded. And you will get to see this replayed. And you will get to
see your faces now assembling as if you were Members of Congress.
Some probably cannot wait to leave and get back and see your best
friends and loved ones and some are anguishing about your departure.
Mary Kate Leonard was on the back row crying. I asked why. She said,
``I'm losing my best friend, Rachel.''
[[Page H3281]]
I said, ``Really? Where's Rachel?"
``Oh, Rachel is a Republican page.''
I said, ``Oh, you are all bipartisan, too, huh?'' Because Mary Kate
is a Democrat, which shows how friendships can cross an aisle and cross
ideological divide. So I asked Rachel to come from the cloakroom, and
she thought I was kidding, to join her friend who was crying and I
said, ``I can't let her cry alone. You have to be out here to be part
of this.'' Now I have got you both crying and I am starting to well up.
I have got a lot of other stories. Of course, Christopher made sure I
came out of the cloakroom to see that his mother and family were
sitting up in the gallery this morning as I quietly mentioned to him,
``Remember, we're not allowed to gesture to the gallery.'' He said,
``Oh, just wave to her, so she knows I'm important.'' He is important
and she is above us now.
<b>Of course we have got several Jasons, a few Laurens. Adam, thank you
for the graduation announcement.</b> I sent you a handwritten note, and I
was actually going to put some money in it as a graduation present.
Then I realized he would tell all of you, and then I would get hundreds
of graduation announcements. So I chose not to. I hope the handwritten
note will suffice for your scrapbook.
Patty Mack, of course, also known as Patrick McDonald, when he said,
``Mr. Foley, who made you say that?'' I said, ``I made it up myself.
I'm Irish. I get it.'' Fabulous young man. This is not made to make fun
of him or anyone else.
The tag team of Dominic and Hilary. Who will forget their exuberance
coming in the room? Bubbly, excited, cheerful. Of course Jordan and
Eddie. Eddie's mother I met today. They are from Florida. He is a
constituent and hopefully a future voter of mine if I choose to run
statewide, so Eddie will be my next best friend.
And, of course, Melanie, and finally John Eunice. <b>John was the
highest bidder on lunch with Mark Foley. Maybe you all do not know this
story, but John had paid considerable sums to dine with me. I had
offered to take the winning bidder to lunch in the Members' dining
room. Then I heard how much John Eunice paid. And I said, ``John, there
is no way in the world after you committed so much money to have lunch
with me that I would dare take you downstairs to eat in the Members'
dining room.</b>'' I said, ``Where do you want to go?'' He says, without
reservation, ``Morton's.'' I said, ``Morton's? Like in Morton's
Steakhouse?'' He said, ``Oh, would that be too much?'' I said, ``Oh,
no, we'll go.'' <b>I said, ``Call your mother, get permission,</b> make sure
she notifies the Clerk and we will go to Morton's.'' <b>And so we
proceeded to cruise down in my BMW to Morton's. And all of this story
is meant to make you all feel jealous that you were not the high
bidders. So we went to Morton's</b>, and I do not know where you all went.
I have a lot of other names here, but I do not want to go through the
litany of lists, Nickie and Tim sitting in front and others.....
..........<b>Mr. SHIMKUS.</b> Now I would like to ask my colleague and friend, the
gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella), to say a few words.
Mrs. MORELLA. You can see how we love you. I was thinking that this
is really like a graduation; it really is, for you. You have had a year
here. And it is really like a commencement, because now you are
beginning another stage of your lives. It has just been a wonderful
opportunity for us to have you, to know that you could tell us who was
speaking at any one time. I think your identification was superb....
.....You note from the wonderful, <b>moving
passion that you heard from Mark Foley</b> and what you have heard from
others, Jim Kolbe and others who have spoken here, too, Juanita
Millender-McDonald who spoke and others who have spoken here, too, and
the person who has been in charge, John Shimkus, you know how much we
appreciate what you have done.....
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<b>flstf, your post seems closer to wishful spin, because it doesn't align with what we already know....and for Hastert, Boehner, Alexander, Reynolds, and Shimkus this story smells.</b>
Last edited by host; 10-02-2006 at 11:05 AM..
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